Drawing Architecture of the Italian Economic Miracle: The Sketches of Vico Magistretti

Abstract

How was architecture drawn in Italy during the years of the economic boom?
The case of Vico Magistretti, a born in Milan architect and pupil of Ernesto Nathan Rogers, as well as a designer of international renown, could provide insight into the evolution of ways of representing architecture, especially during the conceptual stages of the project. The critical re-reading of a selection of six design sketches, dating from the period between the beginning of the 1950s and the end of the 1960s, outlines a cognitive and communicative path of architectural values. But drawing is also a moment of verification of architecture’s perceptive, relational, and spatial datum, which Magistretti would decline throughout his long career convincingly and constantly in one way to achieve progressively different results.